I was welcomed by “Sawubona Mnumzane”, which is “Greetings to your, Sir”, in a Boksburg shopping mall the other day.
It was not clear to me why I was greeted so respectfully by this unknown man of apparent Zulu extraction, until he walked towards me, signalling he wished to have a little chat with me.
This talk in the end proved so depressing and painful. This man I had never met before could easily be in his late 50s. He does not look thuggish; he appeared to be a decent and well-meaning man.
He told that for five years he had been unemployed.
“My family and I are struggling to make ends meet, do you have an ‘itorho’ (piece job) for me?” he said.
I told him I already had someone who provides gardening services and that I was sorry I couldn’t be of help to him. Then he said, “We do not have anything to eat in my ’emkhukhwiniwami’”, an English equivalent of “We do not have food in my house.”
After a long discussion, I offered him a R10 note, which would do nothing to alleviate his unemployment difficulties, and walked away to carry on with my own business.
A sense of sadness and anger lingered on as I drove back to my place of employment. Why do we have so many desperate and poor people in our country? Why do we have so many unemployed people? A time bomb is ready to explode, I think.
I know what the problem is, and many people know exactly where the problem lies.
Those who run this country are destroying economic prospects of a better future for the many while focusing on the selfish ends of empowering the few through corruption and looting of state resources.
This is catching up with us all; a red flag is waving.
No country grows its economy when governance fails its ethical test. Zimbabwe, our next door neighbour, is a useful test case for we who live in South Africa.
We ought to learn from their failure and try to do better.
The Zondo commission of inquiry proves the point, as do other commissions appointed to investigate malfeasance.
Most of our state-owned entities are in a shambles. Men and women of questionable integrity destroyed these useful entities and now the country is short of cash.
The story of a Zulu man who told me he did not have money to buy bread and had been out of employment for a long time signals that the wheels of good governance may be coming off.
If this is true, and there is no solution to these difficulties, hard times await us.
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